Three months ago the TSA announced they were going to start allowing small knives back on airplanes. As someone who has lost two key chain knives to the TSA I was thrilled. As someone who has long hated the security theater that the agency provides I was honestly dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe that someone actually had the balls to rollback one of the many stupid rules that give us a false sense of security. My joy was short-lived. Faced with pressure from flight attendants and legislators the TSA re-banned small knives. *Facepalm*

I understand why though. Who is going to remember the person that makes our lives easier by paring back security? Who is going to be crucified the first time a flight attendant gets cut by some drunk asshole? The political calculus is simple and it’s depressing. Enter the NSA’s PRISM project. In news that surprised nobody it turns out the NSA is keeping track of who we are calling. And by “we” I mean every man, woman and child in the country and then some to be sure. The lack of surprise makes it all the more appalling.

Blaming the Obama Administration for permitting the NSA to request this type of information is like blaming a dog for eating the steak you left on the counter while you were at work. Maybe the perfect dog wouldn’t do that. Maybe. You really should have seen that one coming.

The PATRIOT Act is a tool often used to violate our civil liberties but you can’t really blame the tool. In reality it’s our own irrational fear of terrorism that has brought us here. When three people die in a bombing we call it a national tragedy and congress launches hearings to find out how on earth we failed to stop two morons from building a bomb out of fireworks. Spoiler alert, it’s impossible. If we can’t even figure out how to stop our kids from shooting each other in school, how the hell are we going to stop the Tsarnaev brothers?

When nineteen fundamentalists with box cutters can paralyzed our country with fear something is wrong. The 9/11 terrorists killed 3,000 people and we started two wars, killed hundreds of thousands, spent trillions of dollars, created a giant government agency and made air travel a living hell. Yet 30,000 Americans are killed by gunfire at home every year and it’s par for the course. Something is wrong.

There is an adage that I try to live my life by when it comes to fear.

If it makes the evening news, you probably don’t have to worry about it.

Namely if something happens that is interesting enough to garner national news coverage then it is almost certainly a rare and isolated occurrence. If we can, as a society, accept this reality then I believe we will be able to start making meaningful change. We can make the world safer for our children but we aren’t going to do it by confiscating bottles of water and collecting massive amounts of private data.

§ 2 Responses to Your fear is violating my civil rights"

Amen, brother. But if there’s some way in which this national outrage can be channeled into something productive, I’m fine with blaming politicians and federal agencies. The “how dare you do this to us” narrative can certainly get people fired up …

To what end though? It seems to me that PRISM is merely a symptom of the problem and addressing it will probably do little to fix the problem. It might even make it worse by driving those who believe this type of program is essential to our security further underground. Unless we can channel the outrage about PRISM at the proper target, ourselves, I worry that we will merely increase political rhetoric. Keep in mind that this is one more hurdle Obama has to overcome if he wants to tackle global warming and immigration. Two issues that I feel are far more important.